Law Firms Struggling With Arcane Billing Guidelines Can Look To AI For Relief

// Over the last few years, in-house legal counsel have leaned on increasingly onerous “billing guidelines” for outside counsel. Clients scold Biglaw firms that the lawyers won’t see a penny until the bills comply with a hefty billing Bible of bilious demands. Clients claim it’s about controlling spend, but it feels more like an excuse to drag out collections with red tape.

And clients feel satisfied that they’ve micromanaged the lawyers… and lawyers just raise their rates to cover the overhead of all this frustration.

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Artificial intelligence may not be prepared to solve every legal industry problem, but it might be the perfect fit for this one. ZERO CEO Alex Babin is always talking about developing automation to recover the money lawyers lose doing non-billable tasks, so it’s unsurprising that the company has turned its attention to the industry’s billing fiasco. And when it comes to billing guideline compliance, ZERO estimates that firms can recover millions by introducing AI to the process.

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Because just “following the guidelines” isn’t always enough. Some guidelines are explicit. Others leave a world of interpretation. Still others are explicit, but no one on the client side actually cares enough to force outside counsel to waste time correcting the issue. Where ZERO’s product comes in is in understanding the guidelines and the history of rejections and appeals surrounding the bills to figure out what the bill needs to look like to get the lawyers paid with the least hassle.

“In this particular product, Verify, there are four models being involved,” Babin explained. “One model understands the context of the billing guidelines. Another model understands the appeals and the rejections and everything. A third model actually compares the guidelines, appeals, and does reasoning on top of it. And the fourth model rewrites the narrative specifically for that attorney.”

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And by “rewrites the narrative specifically for that attorney,” he means it will actually recommend new text in the attorney’s voice. “It actually mimics the language of that specific billing partner,” he said. “How she’s been using words before, and what clients like, what they don’t like, and so on and so forth.”

A human from billing can approve all these changes and interact with the recommendations to understand the AI’s reasoning. Here’s a video demo:

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Of course, Verify isn’t limited to Biglaw billing and can be used for any policy compliance task. But for Biglaw attorneys looking for a use case, dramatically shortening collection cycles without adding overhead is a solidly practical one.

Earlier: Outside Counsel Guidelines Continue To Be Productivity Drain
In-House Counsel Make Increasingly Arcane Billing Demands And It’s Costing Firms Money
Law Firms Waste Far Too Much Time On Non-Billable Work

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Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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Biglaw, In-House Counsel, Technology, Zero